Thanks to a game-tying three-run home run from No. 8 batter Kadie Sullivan and a walkoff solo homer from No. 9 batter Hailey Thibault with one out in the seventh inning, Case defeated Dighton-Rehoboth, 4-3, in their South Coast Conference softball game at the Brown School on Wednesday.

Thibault’s homer, over the fence in center field, came on an 0-2 pitch from losing pitcher Jill Rocha. It was her first career high school home run.

“I didn’t think it was over the fence,” said Thibault, a senior. “I was jumping up and down, I was so excited.”

Thibault’s blast was the third homer of the game.

D-R junior slugger Nicole Lundstrom (2-for-3) had put the Falcons ahead 3-0 with her sixth home run of the season, a two-run blast to center in the fifth inning.

In the Case fifth, a Sara Carvalho (2-for-3) one-out single and an error preceded Sullivan’s Bernie Carbo special, an off-field line drive homer over the right field fence.

“We are tough one through nine,” Case coach Norm Beauchemin said. “This is two games in a row the bottom of the order is what has started the rallies. We don’t have an easy out.”

In helping the Cardinals (7-5, 6-3) split their season series with D-R (7-5, 5-4 SCC), senior Shannon Orton threw a complete game, allowing two earned runs and striking out six. She was helped by two double plays.

Orton and Rocha both allowed seven hits.

“It was a good game,” D-R coach Dave Driscoll said. “As a coach when you’re ahead 3-0, you hope you can protect the lead. But I give Case credit. They had two home runs, and down the stretch they hit the ball well and they earned the victory.”

Sullivan’s three-run shot was her third homer off Rocha in Swansea in the last two years. The senior had homered twice in last year’s 3-2 home win over D-R.

“She’s got that power. She just had a bad beginning to the year,” Beauchemin said. “It seems she’s found her swing. We took her out of the lineup for a few games to find herself. And when we brought her back, she’s been stroking the ball ever since.”

Thibault certainly didn’t envision herself being the hero when the game rolled into the last of the seventh.

“I actually told Kadie Sullivan before I went up to bat, ‘I hope you hit a home run so there’s no pressure on me,’” Thibault said.

“Hailey’s been making good contact,” Beauchemin said. “But she hasn’t been using the whole field. Today she used the whole field.”

Page 2 of 2 - D-R, which had beaten Case 5-2 last month, broke ahead in the fourth inning of the rematch thanks to singles by Casey Deleo and Catie Noons (2-for-3) and two errors. More damage may have been done in the fourth but Lundstrom, after reaching on an error to start the inning, was called out for breaking for second base while the ball was in the circle.